Immanuel

                                             Isaiah 7:14

 

 

          It’s a new year! It’s only hours old. Little has gone wrong this year, if only because the year is too fresh to have been damaged yet. We can polish up our new calendars and note all the empty spaces that have yet to be filled. Everything is fresh, at least for the moment. Last week, we celebrated Jesus’ birthday. This week it’s the birthday of 2017. Where will it go for you this year? What great things will happen to you? Where will 2017 go for the church, the United States, the world? All the pages of that book are yet to be written.

          Sometimes the New Year is depicted as a baby, and year end as an old fellow barely able to walk. The days and months have piled up events and tasks until the year’s end comes wheezing to the finish line. But 2017? Now that’s a portrait waiting to be painted. What knowledge do you bring with you for this New Year? What assets are you holding that will help you along the path? What baggage are you toting that you should leave behind?

          The great prophet Isaiah frames our subject today. He prophesies the coming of a great king, a messiah. Among his titles will be Immanuel. Immanuel. In the Hebrew it comes from two words. The first is immanu, meaning “with us.” The second is el, which means “God.” So the compound word becomes literally, With us God. The words of the prophet are quoted in Matthew’s gospel, where Matthew tells his readers that the birth of Jesus is to fulfill Isaiah’s prophecy, and he explains that the word means “God with us.”

          That’s all well and good, you say, but Christmas is over. What good is it for me now? I’ve got to go back to work. I’ve got to go back to parenting children without the gifts of Christmas to cheer them or get them to listen to me. A soldier home on leave has to go back to the theater of battle.  A nurse has to go back to an arena of disease and sickness. A teacher has to go back to classrooms filled with challenges of little time, insufficient resources, ungrateful parents and sometimes lonely or frustrated children. Christmas is nice, but it’s time to get back to the real world, and I need something new, a fresh, strong idea, to carry me through this wilderness of selfishness and greed and trouble.

          God is not unaware of your problems. In case you haven’t noticed lately, he tags along very close to us, waiting for us to invoke the power of his name. Immanuel—God with us. He means it.

          Most of you are plenty familiar with being tested physically. If you have farmed, you endure long days and back breaking chores. It you have competed as an athlete, you have trained through pain and soreness. Linemen climb power poles. Surveyors cut underbrush with machetes. “Homemakers” go from early to late making meals, ironing, cooking, caregiving, taxiing and the like.

          Each of the jobs I just listed and many others you can name come with a healthy dose of stress. There is emotional wear and tear suffered by each of us. We worry about our children, our grandchildren, whether we have enough money, enough job security, enough life and breath in us each day to show up and get the job done. Life is a grind and sometimes, it can get very lonely, even right here in church or surrounded by people.

          But consider this. The Bible is full of such situations. These feelings we have are not novel, not peculiar to us. They just belong to us for the moment as we pass across the stage of life. For instance, imagine how the people of the Exodus felt after being led for forty years by Moses, perhaps the greatest figure of the Old Testament. They reach the so-called Promised Land, but it is not without cost. There are inhabitants in the land. It will have to be taken. And at this great juncture with destiny in the life of the people of God, their leader Moses dies. How would you feel if you were there? If you have ever lost a leader or a loved one, you know that feeling of not only loss but helplessness. In a moment, what was a time for joy has become a time of crisis. And what does God do? He speaks to Joshua and says these words: “Just as I was with Moses, so I will be with you. I will not leave you or forsake you [Josh. 1:5]…for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go” [1:9]. God was with the people of Israel then and he is with us now when we experience loss and fear.

         We face all kind and manner of enemies in life, though many do not come announced as thieves and robbers. Often the threats we face come in more subtle forms, from cancer to heart disease to aging to loss of income or relationships. Consider the trusting relationship spoken by the Psalmist: Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me [Ps. 23: 4].  You are with me, says the Psalmist. It’s not just death to which the Psalmist refers. He is talking about the dark places of life, the places where we feel out of control. God is there with us.

          This theme of God’s presence with us is echoed by the writer of Hebrews. He tells God’s people to keep our lives free from the love of money and be content with what we have; reminding us of God’s promise that he will never leave us or forsake us. He follows with this reassurance: “The Lord is my helper; I will not fear; what can man do to me?” [Heb. 13: 5, 6]

          How do we know he is there? How can we feel his presence in a world full of so many pushes and pulls and distractions? We will have to pull back from the constant callings of other things if we are to hear the voice of God. If we want to feel his presence, we have to first feel. Do you feel? Really feel? Think about how little time you devote to intentionally feeling anything other than what is coming at you right now. Jesus said to his disciples in those last instructions he gave to them in John 15 that if we abide, live in him, we will bear much fruit. Our lives will be productive and full. If we don’t, we will produce nothing. He said to them that if they did these things, their joy, our joy, would be full. What Jesus is telling us is that if we fill up our lives with something other than him, we are going to end up doing nothing worthwhile.

          The book of Revelation talks about a new heaven and a new earth. It talks about the dwelling place of God being with man. It talks about him wiping away every tear from our eyes. Now these are promises for the end times, but think about how much we can have here and now. Jesus has already sent the Holy Spirit to be with us, to live in us, to walk with us. The Holy Spirit is another form of Immanuel; God with us. We don’t have to wait for the second coming of Jesus to experience God right here in real time.

          All these passages and many more point to the same theme. God is with us. The Bible is literally full of references to God being with us. We need not feel alone, for if we believe in God, we can rest assured that we are not alone. Long ago, the prophet Zephaniah (a man whose name means “Yahweh hides”) spoke about the restoration of Israel. We Gentiles some 27 centuries later sometimes question the relevance of prophets who spoke to the exile of the people of Israel, promising restoration to those who believe. What can such literature possibly have to do with a post-religious Western world? What do we have in common with people in exile from their God? Really? Do we really need to ask? We who haven’t seen most of our neighbors during the whole Christmas season? We who tolerate store clerks saying Happy Holidays rather than Merry Christmas? We are living in self-imposed exile and walk around almost blinded by the demands of our culture. No, Zephaniah, Yahweh doesn’t hide. It is we who hide from him.

          And yet, the message of Scripture, over and over and over, is Immanuel. God with us. It was a descriptor for Isaiah to prophesy. It should be our mantra. Everywhere in the Bible, God is calling to us, reminding us that we are not alone and not defenseless. I love the way Matthew bookends his gospel with the idea. In the first chapter (v. 23), he describes a genealogy of Jesus, beginning with the call of Abraham. Then he speaks of the birth of Jesus, reminding us that Isaiah’s prophecy has been fulfilled by that birth; that a virgin shall conceive and bear a son whose name shall be called Immanuel. God makes good on the first leg of his promise: to come to us. In the last chapter, the last verse, the last phrase, it is Jesus talking. He is about to ascend to heaven. He has made good on the second leg of God’s promise; to redeem us. The last phrase says it all: “And behold, I am with you always, even unto the end of the age.”

          In this New Year, if you are alone, it’s because you are choosing to ignore the presence of God, the presence of Jesus at his right hand, and the presence of the Holy Spirit in your heart. Lay down that emotional baggage and pick up the cross. With us God. All of Scripture reminds us. With us God. Can you feel him?